In a football game you can pass for 700 yards whenever you like. In a racing title, you can bend a corner at 70 mph in a family sedan with your eyes closed. So when you take a "sport" like snowboarding and all of the extremeness that comes with it and take it to the world of videogames, the result should be a 100% outlandish game that scoffs at the rules of sportsmanship and laws of physics. This was the intent behind SSX Tricky and EA Canada just about nailed it on the head.
Gameplay
The Xbox controller works very well with SSX Tricky thanks mainly to feel of the analog triggers and reverse placement (in comparison to the PS2) of the D-pad and left analog stick. Everybody will have to take a little time getting used to the control scheme even if you played the original SSX on PS2. Once you get used to the physics of the game and you know how your board, rider and course all interact with each other, the analog stick can be your best friend. Going from the analog stick on windy sections down to the D-pad in preparation for jumps is an easy move for even the most clumsy thumbs. The black and white buttons don't come in to play, thankfully, and the right analog stick makes for some nice shoving and pushing when enemies come by.
The World Circuit modes is the backbone of the game and it's where you'll open all of the most exciting unlockable stuff. Riders, boards, tracks, tricks and outfits are all unlocked while you're battling, one-heat at a time, through each of the eight basic courses. For example you can learn tricks by practicing them, but they only count as part of your character's arsenal if you pull them in a race. Plus, you have to complete each trick in a specific trick book before you can move on to the next trick book. Tricky actually makes you perform tricks to unlock tricks that you may have already performed but not gotten credit for. That is tricky. You'll be relieved to know, however that the game does take mercy on you in that when you finally beat a track and earn a gold medal your unlocked goodies come in bunches. This way of cumulatively earning stuff but not actually receiving the loot until complete one all encompassing task is a masterful way of getting gamers to play the game EA Canada intended it to be played.
The challenge is staying consistent enough through each heat all the way through the final round, the medal round. Not only is each course tougher than the previous one, requiring quicker reaction times, but everybody you're racing against is either a friend, an enemy or is neutral towards you and will act accordingly.
From race to race, you'll smack riders and get smacked back until the two of you are enemies. As an enemy they'll have no problem coming after you on a straight away or bashing into you just before a big ramp. Friends and neutrals will tend to let you do your thing when you get close to them but it only takes a few smacks to turn them on you. Even friends can be made into enemies but it takes a lot more provoking since they'll start off with virtually 0% hatred against you. But if you punk them enough times and they get up to 80% on the enemy meter, it's on. I only bring this up because the whole friendship battle leads into another great innovation in Tricky; the Uber Trick.
The Uber Trick is performed when your boost meter fills all the way up and Run-DMC breaks into the chorus of their 1986 hit "It's Tricky". When you get good, you'll hear this a lot and, sadly, you'll end up hating that classic hip hop track. Anyway your boost meter is full, DMC is rapping and you've got 20 seconds to find a ramp and perform an Uber Trick. This is basically a trigger/button combination that will send your rider into some impossible stunt that you've seen in all of the commercials and promotional videos of the game. Riding the snowboard like a bucking bronco, spinning it around your neck, using it as an airfoil to fly like Superman and all kinds of crazy acrobatics requiring plenty of airtime are all yours if you pull off an Uber Trick. Now, you can fill your boost meter up by performing regular tricks over and over again but why do that when you can just knock another rider down and instantly get a full Tricky boost meter? In fact, you won't want to limit yourself to enemies either. Knock down anybody and everybody you can to keep your boost meter full and your competitors eating snow. This adds a nice bit of strategy to a game that would appear to have very little at first glance.
The basic elements of racing and stunt riding remain the same as the original SSX game. You're racing but the tricks you pull will give you more turbo boost which should be used generously during tight races. You have to account for all of the slopes, angles and ice textures on the tracks because they'll all affect your rider. The sense of speed is damn good. I'm not sure if it's improved over the PS2 SSX, but it's definitely more impressive than what we saw with the other Xbox snowboarding titles.
There are 12 character, six left over from the original PS2 game and six new ones. Some of them are brought to life thanks to the voice talents of real live Hollywood stars like David Arquette and Oliver Platt. Two of the ten courses, Garibaldi and the magnificent Alaska, are new and the rest are retooled courses from the original game. Throw in the Showoff and practice modes and Tricky offers up a ton of overall depth to go along with all of the stuff you have to worry about when you're actually racing.
I don't know where else to put it so let's just talk about the DVD content right here. Just like your favorite blockbuster movie, SSX Tricky has a separate section on this DVD full of extra content related to the making of the game. Videotaped interviews with the crazy lads that worked on the game and features about the live-action stars who lent their talent to the game are the highlights, but you won't want to miss the music and trick featurettes either. In fact the famous people actually talk about the characters they portray in the game. While I was ready to take points away from review because Lucy Lui wasn't on videotape for her segment, they more than made up for it with the exquisite Patricia Valesquez. Put it this way, some of your favorite movies (like Blade Runner) don't have as much extra DVD content as this Xbox game.
Graphics
The Xbox game is the best looking and smoothest of all the versions of Tricky but it still chops up when things get too hectic on screen. There's no better illustration of this than on the Alaska level. The course is huge and beautifully drawn. When you race down some of its tunnels and you're in the lead, you'll blaze through like a bat out of hell frozen over. When the race is a little tighter and you have all five other riders with you, in this enclosed area, things get choppy and choppier. If you start trying to shove and push, it gets down right icky. Icky? Icky!
But the rest of the game's look and movement more than makes up for the very little stutter there is. The riders animate with personality and flair even when they're just zooming down the straights. They'll turn their heads, bend their knees, waists and arms so that they appear to shift their weight into and out of turns. Even in the sketchy parts where you're leaning the stick back and forth like a madman, the riders all keep up with your commands and react.
The tricks on the other hand are outstanding.
All of the spins, grabs and tweaks are so well done that you can begin to recognize tricks as they're happening and not when the name pops up. Even when other riders pull their tricks, you'll be able to call it. Arms, legs, torsos all fly and bend in believable directions and angles and with appropriate timing to really drive the extreme adrenaline snowboarding theme home. And when it comes to the Uber Tricks, you're talking about a higher level of insane stunt boarding. EA Canada made it a point to have the Uber Tricks standout from the regular assortment of moves so they end up looking especially dramatic. The riders usually separate from the board or contort their bodies in some way so that you know damn sure you're watching an Uber Trick.
Sound
The stylized music fits the mood and feel of Tricky, but it still would've been a nice gesture for EA to have allowed users to listen to their own soundtracks in this game. Not that we needed anymore evidence of SSX Tricky's PS2 heritage (read: port), but the trend has been for trick/stunt games like Tony Hawk 2x to allow player created soundtracks.
They could've at least included the rest of the Raising Hell album somewhere in the game because you and everybody around you will be driven insane by "It's Tricky" when it plays for the 9000th time.
Other than that, the voices of the characters are excellent, but using professional actors is actually cheating. But the implementation is so good that it hardly matters. The riders will yell and holler at each other during the races as they jockey for position and pass each other. They'll even hurl rider-specific insults and use their proper names when things are really heating up. As in "Come on , Eddie you can do better than that!" That's the good stuff that we were promised when this whole next generation gaming stuff was announced.